Jun 14th, 2007 by admin 1,527 Views
Many webmasters complain about Google Link Units that they don’t get many clicks. Actually I’ve experienced a different problem with Link Units: they don’t earn much not because people don’t click them, but because your visitors have to make a second click on one of the sponsored sites displayed after the first click.
Recently I’ve registered to Mybloglog to display the avatars of my readers in the sidebar. After a few days I discovered that Mybloglog has an awesome statistic tracking system. There are three sections: “where readers came from”, “what readers viewed”, “what readers clicked“. The last section of the Myblog statistics page is the most interesting one because you can see what links visitors have clicked on your website. This includes Adsense Ads!
Mybloglog is tracking which of your Adsense ads have been clicked by your visitors. Of course you will now think ” why should I use Mybloglog’s statistic tracking system if I can use Google Adsense Channels? ”
The answer is pretty simple. Adsense Channels can only track the click on an advertisement inside and Adsense block or the second click (the one the pays) made on one of the sponsored sites displayed after a visitor has clicked one of the ads inside a Link Unit. If nobody makes the second click, your Adsense channel for link units will show “0 clicks”. Mybloglog is also tracking the first click on these link units. That’s how I discovered the real performance of this type of advertisements.
Statistics are probably different for each website but when I was running Link Units on this blog, only 18% of the visitors that clicked on a link unit, made a second click. By getting 100 clicks only 18 would click on a sponsored website. On the other hand, the CTR of Link Units seems to be much higher than the click through rate of Adsense Blocks. If every visitor clicking the first link would also make a second click, Link Units would probably perform even better than Adsense Blocks!
I suggest to use them both, especially because Adsense Link Units are really small and easy to insert in every kind of template.
Thanks for the heads up on MyBlogLog. I’ve looked at their stats but I guess I miss “where they clicked”.
Keep up the good work!
Don
i’ve read your previous post about adding 3 link unit on a single page and had been experimenting it for a few days now putting one on top just after the header and another below just after a single page (i put it on the most viewed page). I got few extra clicks but the earning is just low. IMO link ads are just drawing away your earning, putting one text ads is i think enough. Anyway, MyBlogLog only shows the top 10 most clicked and you have to upgrade to Pro version to see all the listing.
When I placed a link unit in the header of this blog, it was always between the 10 top clicked links…it had a really high CTR.
Link units did not work really well for me..adsense block seems to be the better alternative since people would need to click twice for you to earn something.